Huge Brazilian Ivermectin Study

 

... shows it highly effective against COVID. 

British Data on Excess Deaths

 

Confirms what Germany is saying ...

A Journal of the Plague Decade

 

The amount of empty shelving at the local supermarket has become alarming. Picking up weekly needs has become hit and miss. For a time I was trying to make up the difference by visiting two or three supermarkets a week. But with Omicron raging, and of uncertain potency, I’m not sure it is worth it any longer. My estimate is that the weekly food bill has gone up 30%.

So You Thought It Was Over?

 

Is there really a bat in here?

Two bits of troubling information on Covid. First, confirmation that people who have previously had Covid can be reinfected with the Omicron variant. Second, 80% of a sampling of white-tail deer have or have had Covid. So Covid now has an “animal reservoir” from which to re-emerge forever in new variants, even if we eliminate it in the human population.

Pandora’s box is well and fully open now. 

But as with Pandora’s box, one hope remains: that Omicron will be milder in its effects.

Armageddon Nervous

 

The news is coming in fast right now--about the new Omicron variant of COVID. It sounds as though it is far more virulent than the previous strains, as contagious as anything we’ve ever seen. Just when it looked as though we were about to come out of the pandemic, down we go again. I first heard of the new variant yesterday. Today, it is already reported from seven African countries, Belgium, Israel, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Hospitalizations in one South Africa province have doubled in the past day. The New York Times is running live updates.

Speculation is that it may be able to bypass the vaccinations, since it has mutated significantly. Nobody is prepared to say yet whether it is more or less deadly than previous strains. One doctor says lockdowns are not going to do much against this one.

Meantime, yesterday the abstract of a study was released suggesting that the mRNA vaccines significantly increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Stock markets are taking a hit.

It begins to feel as though we are in a downward spiral. It reminds me of the pace of Orson Welles’s radio version of War of the Worlds.

Ivermectin--or Something

 

We may be seeing the end of the virus...

A Journal of the Plague Year

 

It is now more than a year.

Just as the vaccines seemed to bring hope of an end, new concerns. The AstraZeneca shot, hoped to be the workhorse, has been suspended in Canada for under-55s for fear of causing blood clots. New variants are spreading that are deadlier and more virulent than the original virus. People are speaking of a “Third Wave.” 

It seems possible that the virus will be able to mutate faster than vaccines can keep up. If, say, the UK and the US manage to vaccinate nearly everybody, new variants might still breed in other countries, enter the US/UK, and be resistant to the vaccines. New round of new vaccines, new round of virus mutations, and the battle goes on year after year.

And everyone seems at the breaking point with the lockdowns.

The COVID Stress Test

 

Ibn Khaldun

There is a theory, by Sir John Glubb, that empires last about 250 years, then collapse from having overreached themselves. 

The idea is not new. Ibn Khaldun suggested in the 14th century that regimes have a lifespan; ruling elites grow lax and self-indulgent over time. Then some new tribe thunders in from the desert.

This thesis has been raised by several voices recently, because American civic society seems to be breaking down. And because the USA is now in the 245th year of its official existence.

Perhaps. I’m old enough to remember when the USA was about to be replaced by the Soviet Union, or eclipsed economically by Japan. The USA is also arguably not an empire, certainly not for its entire existence. 

Any empire runs primarily on prestige. No empire could exist on mere power; human abilities are not distributed that unequally. Prestige builds on prestige; as prestige grows, its jurisdiction expands increasingly beyond what it can maintain without prestige. Eventually, the bubble bursts. 

The bubble perhaps burst for the British Empire with the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore in World War Two. The Warsaw Pact simply ran out of other people’s money. 

The current COVID-19 pandemic is like a stress test: for America, and for all nations, so that perhaps we can see who is decadent and who is not. It is probably too soon to draw firm conclusions—winners one month look like losers the next—but who is gaining prestige from the epidemic, and who is being revealed as less competent?

The case for the US, to begin with, is unclear. Their infection rate has been high, and may shoot higher as newer variants spread. The strain has led to rioting in the streets of many cities. Americans have certainly not pulled together. There have been problems with the vaccination rollout. On the other hand, the USA was first with effective vaccines. The US system has always been designed to be shambolic without breaking.

The UK situation is similar, based on a similar system. A higher infection rate than many countries; but they were almost as fast with a vaccine, and are faster in inoculating. Their vaccine is cheaper and easier to transport; they are set to produce it worldwide at cost. They are liable to benefit massively in earned international prestige. It all follows the typical British model: disorder at the start, but swiftly pulling things together through improvisation; losing every battle but the last.

Australia and New Zealand have done themselves credit so far by almost avoiding the pandemic in the first place; aided, no doubt, by their isolation.

Overall, the Anglosphere looks sound.

What about possible replacement powers?

China, of course, must lose prestige on a massive scale for being the source of the pandemic, and failing to do what was necessary to prevent its spread. They seem to have efficiently limited the virus internally, but by using brutal measures. They have hoarded necessary supplies. They have now developed a vaccine, but without proper testing; and indications are that it is not very effective.

Russia did well by shutting their border early, and have developed a vaccine. But it too has not undergone proper testing, and Russia apparently lacks the capacity to produce it in large quantities.

India will probably increase its prestige. The recorded rate of infection locally is relatively low. And India has most of the world’s actual vaccine production facilities. They are gearing up to produce the UK vaccine in bulk, and have at least one vaccine of their own in the works. They may be in a position to ship CARE packages abroad.

Brazil is doing notably poorly throughout the pandemic; so is Iran. Their initial responses to the virus were reckless, and their attempts to fight is seem riddled with corruption. So much for two other nations often cited as possible future powers.

The EC has also done poorly: things were terrible early in Italy and Spain, are now disastrous in Ireland and Portugal, the central commission has been slow to approve any vaccines, and France’s vaccine candidate seems to have failed its trials. Europe seems to have been suicidal since at least the 1920s. With the exception perhaps of the Nordic countries and the Central European nations that emerged from the Soviet Bloc. Denmark is doing notably well. Sweden may have chosen the wrong course early in not shutting down, but perhaps deserves admiration for trying something different, rather than going along with the crowd.

East Asia, outside mainland China, has also done well. Most notably, Taiwan has vastly increased its prestige. It was one of the first nations hit by the virus, and it effectively stopped it in its tracks. This is significant, because any prestige gained by Taiwan is in effect prestige subtracted from the regime in Beijing. This may bode well for China as a future superpower—but under new management.

South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia have also apparently reacted to the pandemic well at the outset. On the other hand, they do not seem to have been very aggressive in getting the vaccines; their record might look worse in the long term as a result.

Most impressive in the race to actually vaccinate, so far, have been Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Each, individually, is too small to make many waves in the wider world. And the fall in the price of oil is not helpful for the region. On the other hand, the recent peace deals among these very nations suggest the possibility of a new Middle East, under their joint management, that might indeed rise to world power status.

Ibn Khaldun theorized that the new power should emerge from just beyond the fringes of the old, as the Arabs arose from the desert between to overwhelm both the Persian and the Eastern Roman Empire. Just as Rome emerged from the fringes of the Hellenic Empires left by Alexander.

Who might that be? Might a new alliance of CANZUK count as the fringe of the American Empire? Might a new alliance of the Middle East count as the fringe of old Europe? Might the fringes of China--ASEAN, Japan, Korea--become a separate power through alliance? Might Taiwan, as fringe, take over China? Might India be the fringe successor to the old British Empire?

Trudeau's Biggest Scandal

Brian Lilley, on the right, and Warren Kinsella, on the left, at last agree on something: Trudeau's government has seriously screwed up on the COVID vaccine.

Let's hope Kinsella is wrong in his prediction that Canadians will not get a vaccine for another six months.

 

A Journal of the Plague Year

 

The year 2020 is not getting any saner. Toronto is going back into lockdown for 28 days, which will wipe out the Christmas shopping season and probably assure that all the independent brick-and-mortar retailers go bankrupt. It is generally only during the Christmas season that they ever turn a profit, and that is gone now.

Winter kicked off yesterday, after an eerily warm fall, with a blizzard.

Today, also news that the Oxford-Astro-Zeneca vaccine is 70% effective, adding to the Moderna and Pfizer entries. We now seem poised for a mad race to get everybody vaccinated before everybody gets the virus and dies. Latest estimates are that we will all be living with this crisis for another year; still masking and distancing. Hope that is wrong, but the experience so far is that everything has taken much longer than predicted.

Things are wild on the US election front as well. Several states are set to certify their votes today; in the meantime, Sidney Powell has been fired from the Trump legal team. This looks grim for Trump because she was the one claiming she would “release the kraken.” If Trump is pulling away from her, it sounds as though there is no kraken.

Jordan Peterson, back from near-death due to tranquilizer addiction, has just announced a sequel to his Twelve Rules for Life. It is titled, ominously, Beyond Order.

We will long remember this year. But probably not fondly.

What Trump Told Woodward

It flies through the air with the greatest of ease--
That coronavirus at which not to sneeze.

In 2016, Donald Trump was not my candidate. I thought his nomination by the Republicans was disastrous. I would never have supported Clinton, but would have preferred almost any other Republican.

Not the first time I’ve been wrong.

The reality is that he has done an unusually good job, by all visible indications. If any president deserved a second term, he does. The fact that the polls are still against him seems insane.

There is currently a scandal, it is true, about his supposed lying to the public about the COVID pandemic. And demands that Kayleigh McEnerny must also resign for saying that Trump did not lie. Because he told Bob Woodward on February 7 that the coronavirus spread by air and that it was more severe than flu. At the same time, and later, his public announcements were that the virus was “under control” and that Americans should "Just stay calm. It will go away."

I can’t see any lie here; except by the Democrats. If Trump “knew” that COVID was spread by air, and was worse than the flu, he can only have heard this from the experts. The experts at the same time were telling the public that COVID was under control, the risk was low, and they did not know whether it was spread by air. These same experts who advised Trump, or others like them, would have advised members of Congress. No members of Congress were warning the public as of February 7 that COVID was more serious than they realized, and was spread by air. China was saying at the same time that it was under control and probably was not spread by air. The WHO was still refusing to confirm airborne transmission as of July 8. The Centre for Disease Control would not confirm either that it was airborne or how deadly it was. Bob Woodward too obviously knew whatever Trump knew, having just been told by Trump; and he too told nobody.

They were all, of course, acting rationally and in everyone’s best interests. Nobody knew any of this for sure; it was speculation, although reasonable speculation. Everyone was trying to keep everyone calm. Trump was more honest than anyone: he actually publicly said, at the time, that his prime concern was to keep everyone calm. He was the most honest.

It is this that the corrupt elite cannot tolerate.

Trump is consistently a straight-talker. Those who oppose him seem to lie persistently and without compunction.

New Belgian Study

Suggests that hydroxychloroquine indeed does work.

Dr. Campbell is nonplussed by the fact that other studies finding hydroxychloroquine NOT to work used a non-standard dosage.

Why? Why did it take so long to get a study using the standard recommended dosage? Why did none of the studies use the combination first reported to work, hydroxychloroquine combined with zinc and azithromycin, administered early in the course of the disease?

I think Dr. Campbell hints at it without saying: the problem is that hydroxychloroquine is readily available and cheap. Drug companies can't make much money on it, and if it works, it reduces the market for any new proprietary treatment, like remdezavir, that they come up with.

In other news, a British study finds another possible treatment: an extract of eucalyptus readily found in insect repellants.

Even if it's a miracle cure, God knows how long it will take to get that approved...

The Final Lap

They are of course hedging their bets, but it looks from this news story as though the EU is betting on England's Oxford group being first out with an effective vaccine.

Meantime, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are putting in for early supplies of the Russian Sputnik V. This feels less significant. Given their cash reserves and small population, a bad bet it less risky for them.

A Journal of the Plague Year

I’ve had an intuition for a while that the coronavirus scare would be mostly over by September.

I think there are inklings that it might be so.

The international race for a virus seems to be entering the final lap. Russia has actually announced that have one ready for distribution. This is a bit of a dodge; they are simply skipping the traditional third stage of trials, and will be testing it while using it. In this emergency situation, this seems to me to make sense.

But it means that they have not yet won the race; we will only know in a few months, as with several of the other candidates.

And it is a race; an international race for allies and prestige. Whoever does get a good vaccine out the door first will have scored a major coup. The Russians at least are well aware of this—they’ve named their vaccine “Sputnik V, an intentional reference to the space race.

Another prime candidate in this contemporary space race is England. All seems on track there; the New York Times reports that their Oxford vaccine has already been given to more than 10,000 volunteers in Britain, Brazil and South Africa. 30,000 people in the United States are to receive the vaccine next week. This means they are actually ahead of the Russians. AstraZeneca is poised to put out two billion doses if and when it is approved. Some months ago, the Oxford team was saying September was possible; it looks as though it may be.

The next strong competitor is China; or rather, a China-Canada collaboration. They are also into stage three, and still looks promising. China has several other candidates, one of which they have already, like Russia, begun using on their military.

The US of course has several vaccines in development too, and are pouring a lot of money into them, with “Operation Warp Speed.” They are pre-producing massive numbers of doses to roll out as soon as one is approved. Dr. Fauci says he is cautiously optimistic that one will be ready by the end of the year.

Evidence is growing that there is already widespread semi-immunity to the virus. The figure that comes up most often is 50%: 50% of the population already immune, due to prior exposure to other coronaviruses, aka the common cold.

This bodes well for finding a vaccine for the other 50%; in effect, we already have one. Quick and not so dirty: isolate the virus, and expose people to it. They get a cold; they do not die from coronavirus.

And if a cold can do it, it stands to reason that a lab-based vaccine should do it equally easily.

This also suggests that “herd immunity” is a lot closer than we thought. If we already are 50% immune, only another 20% of the population getting vaccinated should do it. There are indications that herd immunity has already taken effect in Sweden, or in London or New York City.

If herd immunity is this close, the Swedish approach might have been the right one: at worst, just open things up, let it rip, and in a month or two, the virus will be spent everywhere. The death rate in the meantime is going down, as we learn more about how to prevent and how to treat. The virus is becoming steadily less deadly.

New Quebec Mask Is 99% Effective Against Coronavirus

More good news. Every little bit helps.

The Wave Is Still Abating

I'm hearing much concern about a "second wave" for the coronavirus, and an upsurge in the US.

According to the stats, it is not true. It is notable that the daily plague count is not going down in the US as it is in Canada or the UK; I think that can indeed be blamed on the recent protests, and it may get worse.

Go East, Young Man

When this virus outbreak began—you remember we are in the middle of a pandemic, right?—I proposed that it was a kind of stress test among nations. Perhaps sent by God to do just this. It would show which societies are most vital.

Whether fully consciously or not, others seem to be making the same assumption. South Korea and Taiwan, for example, seem to have gained immensely in international prestige due to their ability to manage the crisis so well. This may be part of what is behind this drive to go from G7 to D10.

We are probably far enough into the outbreak now to declare some winners and losers. The chart shows the death rates per capita by seven-day average for a selection of countries: the developed “G7,” plus other countries in Central/Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Tropical and antipodean principalities have been excluded because I assume the virus is sensitive to heat and light. China is excluded because their figures are probably not reliable. Russia is excluded because it seems to be still in the midst of it, and the ultimate outcome is not yet clear.

Most striking, to me, is how similar the trajectories are within the different cultural groups—with the interesting exception of Germany. This suggests that culture matters more than the particular government and the measures it took.

My conclusion is that, based on this stress test, civilizational vitality is currently greatest in East Asia, with Central and Eastern Europe next. This is where we can expect the future to emerge.

Now here's a thought: given that Canada could use a larger population, it might be wisest for the future of all Canadians to prefer immigrants from these most vital cultural regions. they may bring with them this cultural vitality, and infuse us with it. At the same time, in doing so, we are less likely to drain the parent society of its vitality.

Which would mean, for example, open doors to refugees from the current Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong.

Stats Suggest Lockdown Is Not Needed

JP Morgan study suggests states that have ended the lockdown in the US have seen new cases decline instead of rising.

It seems to me the datum that new cases are actually declining instead of rising when lockdowns end strengthens the thesis that the virus is sunlight-sensitive, and going into decline because of summer.

Coronavirus in Decline

It is still frustratingly hard to get reliable information about what is going on with COVID-19. Official sources seem to so badly lag unofficial ones as to be useless or even harmful; bureaucracies are vast inert bodies, and perhaps also riddled with special interests pursuing their own agendas. In the media, political partisanship seems to be producing false information consistently. And experts in the field are all over the map, disagreeing on almost everything. You can find an expert to support any possible position.

One prominent expert now says the virus may be dying out naturally. As I noted here some time ago, this is actually the usual thing with epidemics. It does not necessarily have to do with vaccines or “herd immunity.”

I look at the graphs at Our World in Data, and it does look as though he may be right. Among the previously hard-hit countries, the death toll has been declining steadily for some time. Although none are anywhere near herd immunity.

Better treatments? Perhaps. But the number of new confirmed cases daily has also been declining at about the same rate. Despite the rapid “ramping up” of testing.

The result of lockdowns? I included Sweden in the mix last time, and the trend still held. I hear that Austria, Czechia, Norway, and Denmark have been out of lockdown for a few weeks, and this does not seem to have bent the curve upward for any. Denmark, Norway, and Austria are still going down in number of new cases. Perhaps more slowly than during the lockdown period in the case of Norway or Austria. Czechia is trending slightly up.

I hypothesized that this might have to do with the coming of summer and warmer, sunny weather. To test the hypothesis, I look at Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, and Australia, a selection of Southern Hemisphere countries. Presumably, they are now moving into the colder half of the year, so their reported cases should be going up, not down.

And they are—dramatically in the case of Chile or Brazil. Australia is an exception, but they have taken lockdown measures that may have prevented the virus from yet establishing a foothold. Mozambique, Angola, and Uruguay also have seen few cases overall.

Meanwhile, the WHO is announcing that, worldwide, numbers are still rising.

So it still looks to me as though a summer lull is the likeliest explanation, rather than viral suicide.

Either way, we should be able to safely come out of lockdown for the summer in the Northern part of the big blue marble.

A Journal of the Plague Year

Steve Bannon likes to start his shows by saying “Some decades nothing happens. Some weeks, decades happen.” It seems we are at such a time. Perhaps the biggest time of turning since 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Perhaps since 1967-68.

A compendium of the present moment:

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has been declining in the US, UK, Sweden, and Canada for some time. For many weeks, it seemed to be only growing; we seem to have turned the proverbial corner, crested that hill. In the US and UK, it has been going down since mid-April. In Sweden and Canada, since May 1st. This is especially significant because it has been happening at the same time that testing has been growing quickly, so that we should naturally be seeing more new cases.

The daily death toll, a lagging indicator, is also now heading steadily down.

I include Sweden to see if this is a result of the lockdown. It seems not.

Throw in Spain and France. In Spain, the number of cases has been declining since the end of March; in France, since April 2nd.

Guess what this is all aligning with?

The coming of warmer weather.

It seems as though we can generally expect an abatement of the virus for the summer months. For what that should be like, throw in the antipodes, Australia and New Zealand: a small hump around the end of March, really of infected people arriving from abroad, until the borders were shut, and now almost nothing.

We should be good for summer, here in the Northern Hemisphere, at least if we stop flights from below the equator. Until perhaps October.

This gives us some time to prepare our defenses. At a minimum, even without a vaccine or a cure, with our newfound experience, we should be able to attack the thing the way the South Koreans did, testing, tracking, isolating, masking, keeping the economy going.

In the meantime, Tim Poole worries about war breaking out between the US and China; Drudge reports a Pentagon war game suggests China could win a war with the US in the Pacific.

Let’s unpack that. There has never been a war between two nuclear powers, and there is probably a good reason: Mutual Assured Destruction. So I doubt a straight-on confrontation between the US and China. I also doubt that the Pentagon’s war game really suggested a Chinese victory. If it had, bad idea to let that get public. More likely, they are projecting into the future, in order to convince the government to take China more seriously and spend more money on the military. We used to hear similar warnings about NATO’s capability against the Warsaw Pact.

It is true that the Chinese government has been acting aggressive. But the real effect of the coronavirus seems to be to have derailed their attempt to achieve world dominance by stealth. Now suddenly everybody’s on to it; in part thanks to their missteps in handling the virus and its public relations aftereffects, in part because the virus provides a vivid mental image of Chinese infiltration.

Their current aggression may therefore be a sign of weakness and frustration; people near the top may feel a need to show they still have a handle on things—because they do not.

Joshua Philipp expects the Chinese government to collapse within a year. I find that more likely than war. China is set for a spell of severe economic contraction. The government is going to run out of money: with the shutdown, where’s their stream of cash to come from? Their belt-and-road initiative is going to collapse, because they can no longer afford it, and because other nations are now going to be suspicious of their motives. Everyone is now worried about pulling their supply chains home, or diversifying them. People suspect Chinese products are designed to spy on them. Foreign investment is going to shift to India, Indonesia, Vietnam, South America. Demographic trends were already working against China, raising the cost of Chinese labour. A coordinated opposition seems to be coalescing around Hong Kong and Falun Gong.

For many years, few in China have supported the communist government for ideological reasons. Their popular support was based on the old Confucian idea, that the party was a body of experts who could manage well. They are vulnerable to any impression of incompetence.

Early in this pandemic, I theorized that it was a way for God to topple some malignant social entities. More than a theory; it follows from monotheism.

It may well be that it had to be this harsh to do the deed. But it still seems as if designed to topple the CCP.

Perhaps others. Perhaps also the Iranian regime; the Venezuelan; perhaps the EU in its present form.

In the US, it is hitting “blue” states far harder than “red” states; almost as though they were targeted.

Not that the mere presence of the virus should discredit the local politics. However, it seems to have prompted Democratic local regimes to resort to more draconian lockdown measures, in LA, New York City, and Michigan. This is their natural tendency, after all: top down, government driven. And this is perhaps producing a popular backlash. Some “red” regimes, like Florida and Georgia, are easing the lockdowns, and, so far, getting away with it, tending to discredit the big government approach.

The pandemic has also tended to show the established “experts” as frequently wrong; as either self-interested or incompetent. And the essence of “progressive” politics has always been rule by the experts.

I wonder whether the current crisis means the end of the American left as we know it.

There are signs. Google, for example, is cutting back on its “diversity programme.” Not ideological, the techie money guys were simply betting on the side they thought would be least controversial, and so most profitable. They may swiftly switch their bet from left to right.

Mainstream media outlets, the vital pillar of leftist control of “the narrative,” are dying like summer flies on the windshield from the lack of advertising revenue; and this is beginning to include “woke” online outlets too. For one thing, in the face of the pandemic, they are looking increasingly frivolous and irresponsible. If you want reliable news of what is going on with the coronavirus, it has been necessary to go to small independent sources.

Schools, colleges, and universities have been the other strong pillar of left-wing social domination; home of the “experts” and responsible for the indoctrination of the young. They too are particularly hard hit by this pandemic, with people forced to learn how to learn at home, busting their monopoly. Even if students return in the fall, colleges have been surviving and thriving on the foreign trade. Without those international tuitions, demographics should have forced them into decline a generation ago. And the foreign students are probably not coming back for some time.

New York City is apparently emptying out; twenty percent of the population of Manhattan has left. This is a natural reaction to an epidemic; London emptied out during the Black Plague. But having learned to telecommute, and that living at close quarters is not healthy, are they all coming back? The pandemic may inspire a general migration out of cities; something that economics seems to require in any case. Politically, this means a dispersal of the leftist base into Republican territory, where they will be, in most cases, a local minority. It seems likely they will over time adopt local attitudes more often than changing them.

In the meantime, circumstances seem to be combining to destroy the Democratic campaign for this presidential election to an almost uncanny extent. Biden’s mental capacity is visibly and rapidly declining; what were the chances of that? He has been caught by serious “metoo” accusations; he has been revealed to be deeply involved in Watergate-like political corruption in the Flynn affair. This on top of the prior apparent corruption of Burisma and Hunter Biden’s other business dealings.

The nomination process already looked seriously rigged. The Democratic leadership in general looked corrupt in getting him the nomination. Now they look incompetent in doing so as well.

A weak presidential candidate should hurt them in the House and Senate elections as well; but it seems to me that the House Democrats are messing things up badly enough on their own. The impeachment drive looked at best irresponsible, when we now see there was urgent action needed on the coming pandemic. During the pandemic, they are looking at best irrelevant, in staying away from Washington, at worst obstructionist. They have not looked like part of the solution, but part of the problem. The recent Republican victory in a Democratic seat in California may suggest a canary’s dying breath in an anthracite mine.

Interesting times, lads, interesting times.